Marcos LOVES Boomer. He likes to plop down right between Boomer's front paws and get as close as he can to him.
Here are the kids playing in the apartment we stayed in before we found our house.
Yep, he's a beach bum!We finally have a house and recently got internet. So, hence the blog update.:-)
It took quite a while to find a house for rent. We were kind of discouraged about the whole process for a bit. One day Jon was just walking around looking for houses and he stopped at a real estate office he saw as he walked by. As he was sitting there, a lady called and said she wanted to rent her house. So, he went and saw the house and it was just perfect for us!! It was an answer to prayer!
It's a great size for us! It has basically five bedrooms, but they're not all livable as I will explain in a moment :-). Here in Santa Marta hardly any houses are insulated and set up for central air (like in the states). They basically just have large windows so they can let in any breeze and they use fans to move the air around. A couple of the rooms in this house have NO ventilation so they get too hot to stay it for too long.
Jon and I were sleeping in the room that was going to be Ellie's but it really was like an oven, so that is now the "school storage" room. Basically, the bookshelves and my desk will be in there. Now we have moved Ellie's room to the Ellie/"school-workroom" which has the air conditioner :-). Right now Jon and I are in there (with Marcos) since we have given the master bedroom to the Medinas who are living with us until they find a house. So everything is still a bit mixed up and out of place but at least we have room to eventually spread out and get settled.
The biggest difficulty (besides the heat) are the mosquitos. As you can imagine, having the huge windows open we get a lot of bugs! There are no screens! So, Jon's project this week has been getting screens installed. It hasn't been as easy as it sounds since there are several odd shaped "air spaces" where there is no roof--just some bars covering the space so no one can get in but it lets air in. So, we are constantly being bitten! Thankfully none of us has gotten a mosquito-borne illness yet!
The kids have seemed to adapt pretty well. They just keep begging me to open up their boxes of toys. I don't know if I'm ready for an explosion of toys yet! But, I finally got the toy shelf put up so they now have a place they could put them. :-)
Marcos is a happy little guy. Since we got here, he started sleeping through the night! The only bad thing is that he was starting to say words in English, but now he stopped talking at all. He probably is confused from all the Spanish he's hearing. Oh well, maybe when he does start talking he'll use both languages :-)!
Overall, we're doing well. We are just taking things quite a bit slower since the heat seems to slow us down. But, since everyone else here is pretty laid back and slow--we're adapting great to the culture :-)!